RE-act: sustainability awareness kit for children

This was undertaken as a academic semester project during my graduate program in industrial design. The task was to apply the entire design methodology to a subject/problem of your choice.

About: Children are the people of the future. Hence it is necessary for them to be aware and practice of values of sustainability. This is a sustainability awareness kit for children in an Indian urban environments.

Here I explored alternative methods of inducing certain values in children by the “do and learn” method. Designed for a group activity where children indulge in collaborative learning in playful ways. The kit engages children when they make small toy like objects out of corrugated sheets (packaging material). These toys and hence the students become the characters of a story which is narrated by the teacher and students with respective action on the board. The scene created on the board is a demonstration of real life scenario which the children can relate to in their daily life. The story then slowly unravels the problem and how the children can contribute to solving the problem and hence making life more sustainable and healthy.

Key learnings: Design method adopted for system level problems, Insight into child psychology, Introduced to methods of story telling and play and learn.